The Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme (FVISS) and the Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS) encourage the proactive sharing of information between Information Sharing Entities (ISEs).
An agency or organisation may decide to share confidential information about a victim survivor or a (alleged) perpetrator, for the purpose of conducting a family violence assessment or manage the risk of family violence.
Family Violence
Managing family violence risk might not be a core task of your role. However, during contact with a client, you may become aware that they may be affected by family violence, or are choosing to engage in family violence.
Under the FVISS, you can choose to proactively share risk relevant information about your client and/or your client’s family member with:
- another ISE whose role it is to manage the risk of family violence
- an RAE whose role it is to assess and manage the risk of family violence
- a victim survivor about a confirmed perpetrator (when established and confirmed by an RAE) in order to manage the risk of family violence.
Child Wellbeing
Similarly, it might not be part of your core tasks to work with the child (or children) of your client or you might not include the child (or children) in your treatment interventions. However, through your engagement with your client, you might gain insight into the wellbeing of the child involved.
If you believe there are opportunities to improve the wellbeing of the child (or children), you may wish to pro-actively share information with:
- another ISE
- about the child
- a person with parental responsibility for the child
- a person living with the child.
Caution is needed to ensure you are not sharing with a perpetrator of family violence or child abuse.